The text under scrutiny presents us an extract of the confession of a man to his psychiatrist: he talks to him more precisely about his childhood, and the way his mother used to act with him during that period. What is interesting about this text is the manner the narrator presents his memory: our study will therefore focus on the way the upset speech of the narrator reveals the deep traumatism of a man confronted to his own past. We will first enlighten how the narrator and his memory can be seen as the mainspring of the text. We will then go on to explain the relations the narrator seems to have had with his mother, and in a third point, we will endeavour to show how this memory about his mother could have had consequential effects that show through his confession.
[...] But we can so wonder if the questions he asks are not still with him. As a matter of fact, we can't really know if the question “Which do I want to be, a man or a mouse?”(l ) is still a one for the narrator. There is a fusion between his past and his present: the recall he tells about is still genuine. The memory oh his childhood therefore involved valuable effects. We first know that his childhood is important to him since the para text learns to us that he has to make an analysis about it: he has to speak about his childhood to a doctor to evacuate it. [...]
[...] Moreover, numerous climaxes, as potential! My accomplishments! My future!”(l.5) or ‘weak or strong, a success or a failure, a man or a mouse?”(l.15) can be found in her speech; this reveals her trend to exaggerate the consequences of the behavior of her son: she does not accept the least failure from him. The extended antithesis between the lexical field of oppression, composed by terms such as skinny”(l.9), “pushed”(l.11)”made fun (l.11) or “skin and bones”(l.12), and the one of respect, made by the words “respect”(l.13), “strong”(l.14) or “success”(l.15), is entirely of this opinion: she is ambitious for her son and probably thinks the only way to make him react is to scare and oppress him. [...]
[...] Their relations are based on incomprehension: by her authority, the mother has settled a reserve between her and her own child, so they can't understand each other. The two final desperate questions does a mother pull a knife on her own son?”(l.21) and do I know she really wouldn't use are the pathetic proof of this lack of understanding and love. The mother of the character seems to have made his education in a most brutal, almost cruel way; but this obvious lack of marks of affection from his mother has led the narrator to deeper troubles. [...]
[...] talks to him more precisely about his childhood, and the way his mother used to act with him during that period. What is interesting about this text is the manner the narrator presents his memory: our study will therefore focus on the way the upset speech of the narrator reveals the deep traumatism of a man confronted to his own past. We will first enlighten how the narrator and his memory can be seen as the mainspring of the text. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
